Ageing

My views on ageing are well known but as a self appointed historian I am concerned about the source of such brilliance getting diluted. So despite the laziness and non compliance with even the most basic of NY resolutions I find myself motivated to put pen to paper to record my perspective. I would be lying if I was to say that this work has no other impetus, but that is another story.

The most important dates I gather are the ones that pertain to the year in which the grape was grown. It has to do with the temperature, sun and winds that influence its growth and hence the quality of the wine that is made from it. So if seen from the eyes of a simpleton; good year equals good wine and bad year equals bad wine.

If you think your any different from the grape your sadly mistaken. An authority on grapes I am not, but that doesn’t stop me from deriving profound theories on ageing from the little that I know. So following on the original train of thought, there are good years and there are bad years. Do not misunderstand me, and no don’t jump the gun. I am not reinventing the Chinese calendar. Your year of birth is of no interest to me and is inconsequential in what we shall now call my grand ageing theory.

So what are the good & bad years? Are they associated with the days when Clint Eastwood shot for the famous Good Bad Ugly… for a few dollars… and other stuff. Not quite but if you personally feel that those were the good years for Mr. Eastwood your kind of getting the gist. The good years are those when you ought to be in your prime… mostly say 25 to 35 for men and 19 for women (nope no mistake; there is no range here).

Now you see the light! Yes I have written to the folks at Blogger and one can expect them to upgrade their system to accommodate all the adulation that you folks are bound to leave behind. “How?” you may ask did I reach this conclusion. And pray how could I be so exact? Fair questions my good people, and it is precisely these that I now choose to answer.

The conclusion I arrived to through countless hours of research with multiple specimen (fewer male, 2 in a bar I think). The observations and vital statistics (age being a minority here) were all recorded in the Mr. Gates malleable Excel. The empirical results gave us the deduction that I have stated above. Think about it. Do you know any exceptions? Yes of course there are exceptions; the scientific term for these species is ‘outliers’. Why I am one of them.

So who are the outliers? They are those folk at the extreme end of the six sigma normalization curve to whom this theory does not apply. Two reasons: 1) People who mature late; 2) Evergreen. As mentioned possibly 6 in a million, perhaps even lesser. The people who mature late are well… just late and nothing more and get there at say 27 – 37 for the boys or say 21 for the girls. The important point to note here is that they do get there. The variance is basis individual mutation. Us evergreen folks are even more rare. Maybe a handful in a generation. If your male and get the feeling that you haven’t aged a day beyond 25 even while the calendar points closer to 80 you could be one of us. The same principle applies for the women folk as well, but of course there is the important consideration of vital statistics that need to be maintained.

So what advise do I have for lesser mortals who don’t quite make the cut? Stop counting and maybe you will be able to prolong the prime for a little more time. What after that? Don’t go sour instead start studying grapes and drown your sorrows reminiscing about the ‘good years’

Photo credit: Roger B from Flickr.com